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Strange, but its kinda like seeing an old friend retire

I put my new system together today, and as I sit here looking at the small stack of retired parts its kind of hard not to get feelings of appreciation.

I think about how that old P45 motherboard has been with me for a little over 4 years now.

I have never had a motherboard that long. Not even close. Socket 775 was a true victory for Intel.

It has seen me through 3 CPU's (original Conroe, a dual core Wolfdale and finally a Q9550), all overclocked as high as the processor would allow (which includes 466x8.5 for 3960 mhz with the q9550). 3 ram configurations (it is able to run both ddr2 and ddr3), 3 hard drives, 3 or 4 CD/DVD/BRD burners and 6 or 7 graphics card configurations (Single and Crossfire).

In fact the only constant has been a PC power and Cooling Turbo Cool 850 SSI, which I have had for 6 or 7 years.

Its not hard at all to talk about my appreciation for a job well done.

Yeah I know how it feels, I had two motherboards going for nearly ten years each (and still have one of the two).

One was my first ever PC with a trusty Slot 1 440BX board. It went through 3 CPUs (PII 350 > PIII 500@550 and PIII 600... also tried a coppermine 800 which did not work) and from 32MB to 512MB RAM. Outside the case and the motherboard, everything else was upgraded or changed at least once It went from my main PC in 1999 to a "sort-of" file server until 2009 where I sent it to recycling and replaced the whole system for something more efficient. Still felt weird getting rid of that system as it was what got me interested into hardware.

The other was my first DIY-built PC in 2003 with an Asus P4P800 (that was recommended to me by Glussier on the forums here). Did not change as much parts but it's still in operation as my mother's PC and happily runs Windows 7

Nowadays I don't expect that kind of longevity out of hardware, in fact I wouldn't be surprised that my current mobo gives up in two years

Im thinking about selling the board/cpu/ram/video card as a combo. It will certainly be a great system for gaming or anything else really without spending a ton of money.

I remember when I got hold of the Q9550 and all the little teenage genius' telling me how it was already obsolete because i7 was just a month or 2 away.

Yet here I am in 2012 and it was still a system that played BF3, Witcher 2 and Crysis 2 at 16 x 10 at very high settings with 2 4850's in crossfire. I put a 6870 in my new system and I wish I had put it my old pne first just to see what it would do.

My current motherboard is a Asus P5K SE which I have had for about 4 years. It has had 2 CPU's (E6550 > Q6660), 2 RAM configurations, 3 HDD's, 2 Video cards and 2 Windows versions. Still runs Crysis 2 ok.

my asus AM2+ motherboard has seen Athlon x2 4000, Athlon x4 620 and Phenom x6 1055T as it was progressively updated for video editting. its still going strong with an Athlon x2 250 running as a media centre well over 4 years since i first put it together.

but i have to confess, the fondest memories where for a super socket 7 motherboard i had at uni and for years and years afterwards running every thing from a pentium 200mmx to a k6-2 500 and a number of iterations inbetween

I also have couple of old working components laying around my house which I've collected during my computer technician day. It is hard for me to just throw away so I am just waiting for some one to need it.